ITS Helpdesk Blog

The current phone switch and voicemail server, an Avaya Definity PBX, is no longer supported by the manufacturer, Avaya, due to the age of the equipment (18 years +/-). The school currently contracts with a third party at $2000.00 per month ($24K annually) for emergency maintenance. Normal service and support is not covered under this monthly contract and is charged, in addition to the $24K, on an as needed basis. Information Technology Services is looking to reduce annual maintenance costs, improve telecom services and lower administrative costs with the purchase of a new Voice over IP (VoIP) phone system.

Three phone vendors were selected for bids based on size of market served, incumbency and reputation; these vendors are: Cisco, Avaya and ShoreTel. Each vendor was allowed to make a presentation to a steering committee, which was comprised of administration, faculty and staff.

This recommendation is based on the feedback from the steering committee, on independent research that the ITS department conducted and on total/ongoing costs for implementation.

• The majority of feedback that we received indicated that ShoreTel was the phone system that would be easiest to use, meet our current and future needs and would cost the least amount for ongoing administration.
• Avaya was second in popularity; one person indicated that the unique text-to-speech feature and lower learning curve would be helpful. The Avaya system requires a great deal of administrative overhead, making it less popular from an administrative standpoint.
• The Cisco system did not receive any votes for ease of use and in fact is was voted to be the hardest to use and was liked the least in the survey. Additionally, the Cisco system requires the most administration of the three systems and might require a dedicated resource.
• Columbia College in Chicago is using ShoreTel and has reported that the system is extremely easy to use and administer and that the users are very satisfied with the phone system.
• DePaul University in Chicago is migrating to the Cisco system and reported that they are not happy with the amount of administration necessary to keep the system running. They said that if they had the opportunity to choose a vendor again, they would not choose Cisco.
• A report by Nemertes, an independent IT research company, compiled responses from a survey of over 500 organizations that asked decision makers how they rate their VoIP providers. The result was that ShoreTel was the top VoIP provider.
• Based on the total cost for implementation, ShoreTel was more cost effective than Cisco or Avaya.
• Annual maintenance costs were lowest for Cisco, followed by ShoreTel, then Avaya. The number quoted for the annual maintenance costs from Cisco (SmartNet) seemed to be unusually low compared to the other vendor's annual maintenance costs and is not consistent with the annual costs for other Cisco equipment. It is our opinion that this number will increase dramatically over the period of time that the phone system is in use.

  

Recommendation

The ITS department recommends that The John Marshall Law School upgrade its current phone switch and voicemail to the ShoreTel voice over IP system.